


Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained

by minor_ramblings



Category: Star Wars: X-wing Series - Aaron Allston & Michael Stackpole
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2010-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 22:17:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/142303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minor_ramblings/pseuds/minor_ramblings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alderaanian goods aren't exactly a growth industry at the moment... but that just makes for a better profit.  For a Yuletide request asking for Janson, Booster and Squeaky.  With these three together, hijinks ensue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained

**Author's Note:**

  * For [virusq](https://archiveofourown.org/users/virusq/gifts).



> This is my very first Yuletide fic, and while my time management skills might need some refining for next year, it's been a blast from start to finish. Thanking my beta readers might not ever get back to them, but let the internets know that on this day, December 2010, minor_ramblings' longsuffering coworkers and fellow geeks D. and J. did beta this fic, for the glory of all. (Or at least for the bribe of cookies.)

The gentle, curving, almost organic lines of the _Mon Remonda_ 's forward cargo bay mirrored the gentle, curving, entirely alcoholic lines of the puddle on the bay floor. Shards of theoretically unbreakable spacer's glass, rated to resist even the catastrophic cold of the void without shattering, stippled the puddle and demonstrated the gulf between theory and reality.

“Captain Celchu,” intoned the mechanical voice of Squeaky, “Is going to kill you. In the interests of efficiency, would you mind signing over your personal effects now?”

Wes Janson looked up from his meditations upon the slowly-spreading puddle of Alderaanian brandycream to give the manumitted protocol droid a roll of his eyes. “No he won't,” he retorted, slightly more confidently than he felt, “And no _I_ won't, because one, he's not going to kill me and two, you can't have them.”

Despite lacking lungs or any other sort of organic speech apparatus, the patchwork plated Squeaky produced a realistic sounding snort. “While normally I would have equal faith in Captain Celchu's good manners keeping me from having to file excess paperwork, I believe that _is_ one of the last bottles of Alderaanian brandycream currently decorating the cargo bay floor. A bottle that, if my counterpart in Rogue Squadron is to be believed, he'd asked you to pick up and deliver to him off the record, as he was convinced that the Lady Winter's slicing skills would ruin his attempts at surprising her with it otherwise.”

Janson closed his eyes, one hand lifting to scrub at his brown hair and then rub fingers against his temples. The puddle of brandycream was still there when he re-opened them. And so, unfortunately, was Squeaky.

“Are you going to ask me to fetch you a sponge and a new bottle?” Squeaky wondered, evidently enjoying the moment.

“Would you get them for me if I did?”

“No.”

“If I paid you?”

“Yes. But it wouldn't do any good.”

“Don't you have someone to go insult right now? I could swear that I saw Tainer earlier...”

“Strangely, I find your current situation much more compelling. It's like watching a man wreck a speeder bike on a clear day with no traffic. In slow motion. Fascinating. Highly educational. Besides,” Squeaky added, with a very bad attempt at sympathy. “You shouldn't be alone in your time of loss.”

“Hah,” said Janson shortly. After nudging at one of the spacer glass shards with a booted toe, the question of “...What do you want?” escaped him, dragged out despite his best efforts to ignore the droid.

“Oh, another question. Very good. But you're still asking the wrong ones. Maybe you should try asking what I can do for you instead.”

“All right, what can you do for me?”

“Major, is that any way to ask a favour of someone who could well be your saviour? Try 'Great Squeaky, hero of the Rebellion and entirely under-appreciated genius of the stores, please, oh please, could you find some space in your busy day to help this poor stupid biologic in his hour of need--”

“Squeaky, you do realize that I'm armed, yes?”

“Humans. So tediously violent. Still, manners cost you nothing, Major. A lack of them on the other hand...” Squeaky trailed off significantly. And did not depart.

“All right!” Janson gritted his teeth, and after a moment spent mulling on the charms of not having to tell Tycho about this little incident at all, managed a drippingly cordial “Squeaky, could you _please_ tell me what you can do for me?”

The droid's grilled and glowing eyes twinkled at him obnoxiously. “Get you a replacement bottle, of course.”

“I'm supposed to believe you just happen to have another bottle of Alderaanian brandycream sitting in the unit stores? I hate to break it to you, Squeaky, but Alderaanian goods aren't exactly a growth industry at the moment.”

“Are you done stating the obvious, Major? Of course I don't. But I _do_ know who could get you one, if you'd be willing to do me a small favour.”

“What kind of favour, and how small?”

“You have two point seven standard years of leave banked at this point. I propose, as we appear to be in a lull between galaxy-spanning crises, that you take some of it and pay a visit to the _Errant Venture_. Your love of sabacc would be enough to recommend you to it on your own merits, but since I regrettably cannot include piloting skills in my vast repertoire of talents, I happen to have a small package that would interest Booster Terrik that needs to get there too. If you'd be a good little pilot and deliver it to him, this would grant you the _large_ favour of being able to speak with him directly.” The droid's eyes flickered again. “Don't worry. Even you couldn't break it.”

“Is it illegal?”

"No.”

“Explosive?” 

“No.”

“Infectious?”

“No.”

“An ewok, live or otherwise?”

“No.”

“Larger or smaller than a breadbox?”

“Major, do you want the brandycream or not? Outside of levels of violent ingenuity even you may not be capable of, the delivery is generally considered beneficial to humanoid life, perfectly legal, and comes in an attractive package. There may be ribbons.”

“Fine. I'll need time to find a ship I can borrow.”

“Oh-- take your X-Wing. I'll get Emtrey to square the paperwork. In the meantime, clean that up before someone slips on it. Do I look like an MSE droid?”

Left alone with his broken bottle of brandycream and a pressing need to locate a mop, Janson stared out the magcon seal into empty space. “I'm going to regret this somehow.”

 

* * *

Aboard the  _Errant Venture_ a week later, Janson stretched in his seat as the dealer droid dealt another hand of sabacc. Beside him sat a locked plasteel case, smaller than a breadbox, still decorated with – thank you, Squeaky – a cheerful red ribbon, now somewhat the worse for wear. Across from him sat Booster Terrik, in the company of a large stack of credit chits, many of which had formerly been in front of  _him_ .

“It's got to be the eye,” he muttered to himself, looking from his dwindling pile of credits to the red glow of the cybernetic replacement that peered out balefully where Booster's left eye should have been. He was willing to bet – although what with, he wasn't sure – that it could see through the backs of cards and the walls of shipping crates with equal ease. 

“What?” Booster's tone was lazily interrogative, the voice of a man at his ease but aware of his surroundings... but with a slight edge to it that set Janson's combat awareness to tingling.

He'd spoken aloud.   _Damn._ “Nothing.”

“I heard a 'nothing' that sounded an awful lot like a something, my boy.” The edge was more pronounced, and both Booster's eyes were tracking him now, despite the genial overtones of his body language.

“It's _nothing_. Just that...” Wes Janson was a starfighter pilot, and one of the best. Snap-rolls into unexpected directions, for great risk and questionable glory? Not just second nature, but _fun._ He grinned, and concluded a little louder that “It's got to be the eye.” 

“Are you sitting across from me at my sabacc table, on my ship, under my hospitality, accusing _me_ of cheating at cards?” The genial overtones were gone now, and Booster was rising to his feet, heat rising to his face along with the motion. Above, the dealer droid stirred, bringing a stun baton 'cheater prod' into range as a just-in-case. 

Janson shifted in his seat, weight finding his feet as he eased into not so much combat stance as combat readiness, a hand taking a grip on the edge of the chair as his brain flicked across the possibilities for introducing it into a fight. Yeah, there, to the gut, or a high strike... “Maybe,” his mouth ran merrily on ahead of him, chasing after the hint of wrongness about Booster's performance by the simple means of egging it on. “I mean, it's your ship and your cards--”

“Next you're going to say it's because I'm Corellian.” Booster growled, rounding the table with heavy hands clenching into fists the size of a toddler's head. “It couldn't possibly be that you're just that bad at sabacc. You have to come on board _my_ ship, and accuse me, an independent businessman, of cheating his own customers! If you weren't a friend of Wedge, I'd--!”

The penny dropped between one of Booster's blustery strides and the next.

“No you wouldn't,” Janson stated, although he dialled back on the brat quotient a little. Booster's fists _were_ getting a little close for his comfort if this wasn't just a little fun.

“Wouldn't I?” There it was. Too quick to anger, too easily taken in by a dig a hundred players before him must have made... and within the mask of violent anger Booster's eyes were twinkling.

The older man sat down, anger shed like a Storini glass prowler's old carapace. He grinned wolfishly, well pleased.

“No, you're right, I wouldn't. You're quicker on the uptake than my daughter's pet CorSec would be... although I wasn't sure you'd bite for a minute there. Let's call it, and you can tell me how much you're going to owe me.”

“Your generosity of spirit continues to astound me, considering you just generously made off with my sabacc stakes.” As if to emphasize this point, Janson lifted one of his last few, sad little chits and nodded across at Booster's pile.

“Oh, ease up Major,” Booster encouraged, making his seat creak as he sprawled back into it. “I just can't have you making off with too much of my crew's salary. They get sticky fingers when they're impoverished, half of them, and I can't afford to fire too many more for ripping off my Diamond Level patrons.”

“You mean ripping them off without cutting you in on it,” Janson felt the need to clarify.

“Side matters,” Booster waved off. “What I find interesting is what's in that case you've been toting with you.”

“Delivery from Squeaky.” _Not my fault, none of my business_ , Janson mentally added.

Bushy eyebrows rose from across the table, along with a snort. “Nobody's shot that droid yet?”

“Not for lack of wanting to,” Janson was compelled to admit with a sigh, “But he said it was for you.”

“Said something else too, didn't he?” Booster ventured, arms folding over his chest and the chair tipping back before rocking forward to a solid landing on all four feet.

“Said you might be able to help me.”

“And what could a fine upstanding Rogue like you want with old Booster's services?”

“Alderaanian brandycream. One bottle.”

Booster snorted again, and with a bark of amused laughter pointed out that “You _do_ know that Alderaanian products aren't exactly a growth industry at the moment?”

“You're saying you can't get it?” Janson had studied in front of a mirror for two weeks at age ten when he was down with Bandonian dermapox. He could raise one eyebrow with the best of them. He applied this skill now.

“You're saying you can afford it if I could?”

“I...” Truth be told, he couldn't have afforded the original bottle of brandycream, and all the raised eyebrows in the galaxy couldn't cover for that fact.

“Hmph.”

“Look, it's not for me, it's for--”

“Captain Celchu, probably as a present for his girlfriend.” Booster rattled off, with a certain petty satisfaction, it seemed to Janson, in holding a good hand of cards and playing them against a joker.

“Look, if you already knew why I was here, then why all this?”

“Because it was funny,” was apparently going to be motive enough. “ Now, I don't have any bottles of brandycream in my hands right now. But I do think I could get you one, and at no cost to you, if you'd be willing to do a few little errands for me in that X-Wing of yours that's currently making some of my customers nervously impressed with my connections.”

“Illegal?”

“Do you think I'd tarnish that shiny New Rep uniform of yours?” Janson deployed his eyebrow. “This cheap?” Booster amended, lips crooked.

“Just checking.”

“Good boy. And before you waste my time, it's not explosive, infectious, and when did you last _see_ a breadbox, by the way? I might have a buyer.”

“Squeaky talked.”

“Holonet transmission. How do you think I knew about Celchu?”

Was it _deja vu_ if you knew exactly where you'd felt this feeling before? “I'm going to regret this.”

“Maybe,” Booster agreed, with a sad lack of sympathy for the plight of the serving pilot. “ But you'll be regretting it with a bottle of Alderaanian brandycream in your hand. Now, are you going to ante up or not?”

 

* * *

Three weeks later, with his sense of time drifting somewhere back in hyperspace, Janson was back on the Venture again. 

A man named Dravis on Coruscant had been a day and a half late, but had been happy to talk once he dropped Booster's name.

Mara Jade had thrown a drink on him at Alakatha, but had handed off a set of code-locked datacards after a bar brawl that no innocent pilot like him would   
_ever_ have engineered.

On Naos III, a female Twi'lek who'd never given a name had been insistent on tipping the delivery boy. Into a grav bed and not alone. He'd gotten the data cards back eventually. His cred cards... more eventually.

Karrde had taken the delivery in orbit around Brentaal and sent him back to Booster with a sealed case, and a free-floating offer of a job that he wasn't entirely sure he shouldn't pass on to General Cracken's intelligence group.

Now he was back in Booster's office, sealed case at his side as he sat wedged between stacks of crates labeled spare parts that could hold anything. With a coldpack pressed to a rising lump on his temple, gift of a turbolift failure on the way up, he nonetheless grinned to himself, bouncing a little in his seat in what Wedge and Hobbie termed the Wes Janson's A Five Year Old dance.

Damn it, despite himself, or maybe because of himself, he hadn't had that much fun on leave since--  Well, he hadn't had that much fun on leave in--  _Lets's go with 'a while'._

“Booster!” he greeted, as the shadow of the office's owner filled the doorway. “I've got a package for you, and Karrde's regards. Also, your turbolifts are about as reliable as a Bothan politician, just for the record.”

“Actually,” said Booster, with the wide grin reserved for either those he was charming, or those he'd just pulled one over on. “The package is for you, Major.”

Janson was unsure of which side of that fence he fell on. He eyes the sealed case askance, as if suspecting explosives.

The wide grin was a smirk now. “Well?” wondered Booster. “Aren't you going to open it? I do have other uses for this space besides housing stray Rogues.

The thumb lock on case's read pad flashed red, red, green, then chimed gently over the soft click of magnetic locks releasing. Inside, fitted into one of three berths cut in protective foam, lay a bottle of Alderaanian brandycream, with a familiar red ribbon, even more the worse for wear, wrapped and tied in a crumpled bow around it. The other two berths were empty.

“...” was a good start by Janson, as he turned the case over, and fixed Booster with a hard stare.

“Sounds like?” encouraged Booster.

“Please tell me,” said Janson faintly. “That Squeaky did not have three bottles of brandycream in his stores after all?”

“I did say that I didn't have another bottle, Major,” came an obnoxiously familiar mechanical voice from the doorway behind both of them. “Which is accurate. I had three. But you wouldn't have learned this valuable lesson if I'd just given one to your oafish self.”

“And you wouldn't have been able to come away with a sixty percent additional profit on selling those other two bottles without a stray Rogue to run them around for you,” Booster felt the need to add to Squeaky, who merely dimmed his eyes at him in an innocent blink believed by no-one.

“Thirty percent of which went to you, Captain Terrik, I might add,” said the droid, a touch more petulance than usual worked into his voice synthesizer.

“Because it wouldn't have worked without my contacts, and you know it,” Booster recounted.

“Yes, because smugglers are _so_ hard to find in this galaxy--”

Janson cut in before the two could settle into a round of argument that had been established during the Bacta War and only grown since. “Yes, but why  _me_ ?” he wondered.

“Oh,” said Booster with a smirk, and a slap of his hand to Janson's shoulder. “Because Wedge would've done it as a favour to family. Celchu, Klivian... they might've swung it... but _you_ enjoyed it.”

Janson couldn't argue with that, as a shrugged salaam in his seat conveyed. “Ah well,” he said, with the fiendish gleam of a pun in his eyes. “Nothing   
_Ventured_ , nothing gained.”  


End file.
